Of Ants and Men

I’ve got a problem with ants.

The little black ones that

often invade homes.

Especially in summer.

Maybe they are looking

for water, maybe that’s

just when I notice them.

But I don’t think so because

that’s when they crawl

off the counter onto me.

My personal trouble is

that most of time I can’t

see them, The countertop

is some kind of dark granite,

speckled like coffee grounds,

chocolate, and licorice.

Those tiny little ants are

invisible to me until I feel them

on my arms or sometimes

they make it all the way

to the back of my neck.

My Mom’s Dust Bowl immigrant

family called them sugar ants.

And the little yellowish-brown

ones, were grease ants.

Because that’s what they

like to eat. Good enough.

I wouldn’t expect them to use

scientific binomial classification, like

Tapinoma sessile or Solonopsis xyloni.

Sugar or grease ants is more

functional, you are what you eat.

The ones I learned to fear

at a very tender age were

the little red ants, so-called fire ants.

Because they bite. And they always

seem to come in swarms of hundreds,

thousands. Or so it felt like when they

climbed onto my poor bare feet.

Later on when I was old enough

and curious enough and wise enough

to not go bare foot at Grandpa

Smith’s farm, I convinced my

Mom and Dad that I needed

an ant farm. The one with a little

green plastic farm houses, a windmill,

some trees and a barn sandwiched

between two sheets of clear acrylic.

Came with sand and a jar of ants.

So you didn’t have to find your own.

Sugar ants, so you could feed them

sugar water and watch them construct

their tunnels. The kit was called

Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm.

That name may have convinced

my Dad, Milton, that it would be

a positive learning experience.

Of course eventually the ants all died.

Not sure if that was my fault or just

the natural life span of ants.

I was more intrigued by larger,

more hazardous arachnids,

like black widow spiders and scorpions.

I captured scorpion in the woods and kept it

in a pickle jar with some leaves and bark

in my desk when I was in 4th grade.

I fed it the bountiful tent caterpillars

that were plaguing our region that year.

This was the source of much amusement

for Mom when she told the story

of parents' reactions when they opened

my desk on back to school night.

As for ants though, I would rather

know about them from a distance.

In a book, a tv show or movie. I had book

with a fold out illustration of an Army ant

bivouac that was terrifying. Because it

said they eat everything, no matter

how big or fierce.

Four or five decades later

I read Edmund O. Wilson’s book

“Biophilia” about the innate human

love of the natural world of living things,

plants or animals, vertebrates or not.

And apparently his special love,

his lifelong fascination, was ants.

That tells me a lot about the capacity

for all embracing love. Ants?

As someone else once said, anything

that organized has to be communist.

I think that God must love them plenty

because he sure made a lot of them.

15,700 named species and even

more yet to be identified.

I guess they didn’t take up

a whole lot of space on Noah’s Ark.

But my prayer to God or Gaia

or Buddha and with apologies to Jains

and vegans, I just want to get them

out of the kitchen or crawling on my body.

James Brown sang, I got ants in my pants

and I need to dance. Well, alright, JB,

but I don’t need some big fine sister

to give me a chance. Ahhh, Good God,

Lift me up, you know I feel it.